A WEEK IN BOOKS : Reading and Watching Joseph Mitchell

Ever since I bought a copy of the Vintage paperback of Up In The Old Hotel in the U.S. years ago I have been a devotee of the work of Joseph Mitchell. I have read all of his books and my current digital subscription to The New Yorker allows me to read everything he ever wrote for that magazine. I am also constantly trying to source as many articles I can on the great man to add to my slowly thickening file in between catching repeated snippets of Joe Gould's Secret on youtube (more in a moment). This week I have been reading an old Oxford American feature on him by Sam Stephenson - http://www.jazzloftproject.org/files/file/MITCHELL.pdf – which focuses on Mitchell's obsession with collecting seemingly mundane artifacts from the past – in New York but also in his home state of North Carolina – a pursuit that presumably filled up his time when he stopped publishing anything in The New Yorker after the mid-60s despite remaining on the magazine's staff for thirty years thereafter. There is also a visually stunning companion piece in Granta 88 by Paul Maliszewski which I recommend as well. But I suppose the exciting news for all Mitchell fans is the forthcoming biography Man In Profile : Joseph Mitchell of The New Yorker by Thomas Kunkel to be published at the end of April by Random House. Kunkel is the author of an excellent biography of Harold Ross – founder of The New Yorker and Mitchell's first editor there - and has also edited a volume of Ross' entertaining correspondence. So expectations for the Mitchell book are very high. Is he able to throw any more light on the mystery of why The New Yorker never published anything by Mitchell after Joe Gould's Secret in 1964? Mitchell certainly didn't stop writing, and The New Yorker has in recent years been publishing tantalising extracts from an unfinished biogrpahy, so what was he thinking? I suspect that as the 60s wrought its seismic cultural changes and his old, more genteel New York started to disappear, Mitchell became a man out of time, more and more disillusioned with what was going on around him and unwilling or unable to summon the enthusiasm to document his vanshing world anymore. The astounding thing is that his legacy and influence are still so strong today. Joe Gould's Secret is probably his most famous work. It's a wonderful book and a masterclass for all budding biographers, but it's also a great film as well. Stanley Tucci (currently the star of the TV series Fortitude and an actor growing in prominence) gives a subtle and engaging performance as Joseph Mitchell as well as directing the film, and the great Ian Holm plays the hobo/con-artist/intellectual/chronichler-of-our-times Joe Gould brilliantly. Susan Sarandon and Hope Davis also appear. It's never been released here on DVD, which is a crime, and with Thomas Kunkel's book about to project Mitchell and his work back into the spotlight, now, it would seem, is the time.